The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools’ Board of Education met Thursday night to discuss budget cuts to language programs.
What's new?
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Ashauna Harris, the district's chief human resources officer, gave a presentation on the Board's budget request for FY 2025-26.
- She said there are 93 positions that will be reduced by June 2025 across the school district.
- Nine full-time jobs and three part-time jobs will not be renewed, although some of their contracts were scheduled to end in June 2025.
- An average of approximately six jobs will be cut from each of CHCCS's middle schools. Ten jobs will be cut across CHCCS's three high schools.
- Harris said for the 2025-26 school year, CHCCS will be offering all current languages in the same schools.
- Superintendent Nyah Hamlett said all language options may not be offered in the same grades because some classes in certain grades have low enrollment. Classes are not usually offered if there are under 15 students enrolled, she said.
- Hamlett said the district will not be able to operate in the same manner due to current budget uncertainties from the N.C. General Assembly and the potential for cuts to federal funding.
- “Without clarity on state funding commitments, we must make conservative and responsible fiscal decisions to ensure we can sustain critical resources to our students and staff,” she said.
- Hamlett said the district needs help from the community to direct their energy where it can make the greatest impact, which is at the state level. She added that state public schools are chronically underfunded.
- "Public money should go to public schools,” she said. “Repeat that message as loud as you can.”
- During public comment, several students, both middle schoolers and high schoolers enrolled in language classes, spoke about their experiences learning Latin and French in CHCCS classrooms.
- Julia Gordon, an eighth grader at Culbreth Middle School, said although she has only taken Latin for two years, it has completely changed her perspective on what a good classroom environment should be like.
- Gordon and her two friends put together a Google document, she said, to collect signatures to disprove of the budget cuts to the Latin and French programs. She said they have collected over 1,000 signatures for the petition, in hopes that the district will change its mind and choose to keep the language programs.
- “I understand as a middle schooler I do not understand all of the monetary things that are going on right now, but I understand that languages are so important as you can see by this long line of people who are coming to speak about how they feel,” Ella Horrigan, another eighth grader at Culbreth Middle School, said.
- UNC student Arwen Helms graduated from Carrboro High School in 2021 and Culbreth Middle School in 2017. She said her Latin teacher’s impact on herself and her loved ones cannot be overstated, and that it would be a mistake to diminish these programs to any extent.
What's next?
- The Board will hold its next regular meeting on April 10 at 6 p.m.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Arwen Helms is a former City & State writer.
